I swathe little boy being bullied by bigger boys, coming home to a dark house.
I saw him being yelled at by an older man who called him a pussy for not fighting back.
“I’ll teach you how to fight back,” the older man said and slapped the kid in the face.
“Don’t hit me daddy,” the boy said.
“Fight back you little prick,” the man said and hit him again.
“Put up your fists,” the man ordered. The boy complied, forming his small hands into tiny, bony fists. The man ducked the fists and hit him again.
The boy just covered his face and sobbed. The man looked at him in disgust and stomped off.
The boy looked so lost and lonely. His name came to me.
“Dane,” I said. He looked up at me with a tear-stained face.
“Don’t hurt me,” he said.
So much pain in the world, I thought. Nobody deserves to be treated like that by his father. I wondered where his mother was.
As if he could hear my thoughts, Dane replied, “Nobody loves me.”
“Somebody loves you,” I said, hoping against hope that it was true.
“Gramma,” he finally said, wiping his nose on his shirtsleeve. “But she’s dead.”
Okay, I could work with Gramma.
“What’s her name?”
He looked at me like I was dumb as a rock. “Gramma.”
I nodded. Because of course it couldn’t be easy. “Let’s call her.”
He looked around at the gray nothingness that stretched out in all directions.
“She isn’t here.”
I was worried that she wasn’t. If she was dead, she could very well have gone beyond the Gate and if she’d done that, I didn’t think there would be any way I could reach her.
“Let’s try calling her anyway,” I said.
“Gramma?” he said tentatively. “Gramma?”
The silence was deafening.
“She doesn’t love me because I’ve been bad,” he said.
“What have you done that’s so bad?”
“I tried to kill you,” he said. “And your mother.”
I though he meant Elle, so I corrected him. “My stepmother.”
“Her too,” he said. My heart skipped a beat.
“My mother died of cancer.”
“Yes,” he said. “I made her have cancer.”
“Why?”
“My master asked me to.
Again I could only ask “Why?”
“I thought you’d figured it out,” he said, somewhat peevishly. “My master said you were smart.”
“Who is your master?” I asked.
“I can’t speak his name,” he said. “that’s the first rule.”
I know eff-all about demons, so I didn’t know where to start. Belial? Mephistopheles?
“Why does your master care about my mother?”
“He didn’t,” Dane said. “But he made a bargain with a human and she was the price.”
Dad. The only possible person who might make a bargain like that was my father.
“What was the bargain?”
Dane shrugged. “What it always is. Money. Power.”
I thought back to the months when my mother had been sick, all those business meetings he’d attended. I thought it had been his way of shirking his responsibilities, but he had been out in the world, making deals to enrich himself.
He wanted that private jet.
“Okay, I get that deal but why have you targeted me and Elle?”
“Everybody knows that when you make a deal with the devil, there’s always a catch.” He looked at me to see if I understood the concept.
“So I’ve heard,” I said.
“So your father got rich and powerful, but the problem was that he did a bunch of bad stuff.”
“And now the law is after him.”
“Yes,” he said.
“So he’s making a deal to get out of trouble.” It wasn’t really a question.
‘Yeah,” he said. “You were supposed to die in the car accident, but then that angel came along.”
He practically spit out the word. “So since I didn’t die, he told you to try again?”
“Yeah,” he said. And then he snickered. “He was so mad it didn’t work. But what he doesn’t know is that there’s another catch. My master has grown tired of him. He hasn’t fulfilled his part of the bargain, so he’s going to take him in payment.”
Despite what I now knew, this horrified me.
“When?” I asked.
“When it pleases him.”
I knew I had to get back but before I could, I needed to do one thing.
“How’d you end up working for a demon?”
He almost looked embarrassed. “I was kind of a bad kid. With a temper. And one night I got drunk and burned down my parents’ house. With my dad in it.”
I thought his dad probably deserved it but didn’t think this was the time to say that.
“I ended up burned up too,” he said, because I stayed too long watching him, and got trapped by a falling beam.
I got here and Asu—”
He broke off as he realized he’d almost spoken the name of his master aloud.
“And my master offered me a choice. He said I could be useful to him and in return, he’d make sure that I was taken care of.”
I wondered how that worked and what it meant. Again, as if he’d heard my thoughts, he said, “I have a contract.”
“Are there any circumstances that’ll allow you to break the contract?”
“If someone who loves me claims me. But that’s not gonna happen.”
The hell it’s not.
I stood up, suddenly filled with a feeling that was somewhere between righteous anger and desperate need. I had told Dai that since the accident, I’d been painfully aware of other people’s pain. He’d told me my destiny was to use that new empathy to do some good. If that was my destiny, then I needed a sign right now.
“Dane’s gramma, are you there?”
Nothing. Dane gave me a look that said, “See?”
“Dane’s grandmother, he needs you.”
The silence was deafening.
And suddenly there was a whoosh and I felt my ears popping like I was on an airplane.
A thin woman with a care-worn face stood in front of us. She wore sagging sweatpants and a matching hoodie that hung off her frame like she’d lost a lot of weight. It looked soft and comfy, but the color had been faded by many washings.
“Dane,” she said, and I could hear the love in that one syllable. Love and regret that she had birthed the monster that had turned her beloved grandchild into a monster himself.
“Grandma,” he said. She opened her arms to him.
“I’m so sorry,” he sobbed as she stroked his dirty dark hair.
“I’ve been waiting for you boy,” she said. “We’ll be going now.”
“Godspeed,” I said, but I don’t think they heard me. They were already walking toward a gate that had suddenly appeared in the distance.
And it looked exactly like what you would expect the gate of heaven to look like—fancy scroll work and pure white.
I felt tears on my cheeks. And weirdly, where my tears fell, I could feel my face healing. It felt like getting a mask treatment at a spa—warm and tingling.
I woke up the next morning to find my face was in fact totally healed. There weren’t even any scars. Elle didn’t seem to notice the miraculous transformation and when I went to school, no one else did either. It was as if the accident had never happened, but it had.
I had told Elle what Dane had told me.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Me, too,” I said.
Two days later, while driving to the airport, my father was killed in a car accident. The other driver was cleared of all responsibility as half a dozen witnesses saw his car swerving wildly before the collision.
Both Elle and I cried at the funeral. Because we had
loved him.
I wondered where he had ended up, and if I would ever encounter him in beyond the Between.
Epilogue
That night, I once again found myself in the Between. Dai was there waiting for me.
“Dai,” I said, and he reached for my hand and pulled me to him. Healing warmth poured into me, giving me strength, just as he had once healed my mortal wounds. It felt like we had come full circle and I knew that this was an ending.
“Will I see you again?” I asked.
“I’ll always be watching over you,” he said.
“But I love you,” I said.
He smiled sadly. “I love you too.”
“We could live in the world,” I said. “We could work as a team, doing good.”
“You’re seventeen,” he said. “The world would not let us be a team, even if it was possible.”
“It is possible,” I said.
“No,” he said. “Do you remember the first question you ever asked me?”
I had to think a moment, but it came to me. “I asked you if you were an angel.”
“I need to show you what that means,” he said. And suddenly a hot wind rose around us, blowing at my clothes and lifting my hair. In front of me Dai was transforming. He grew bigger, until he was at least seven feet tall. His features melted into something softer, more feminine, and then morphed back into the face I knew and loved. But as this physical transformation was taking place, his clothes were dropping away until he stood naked before me.
Not he.
Not she.
His—they’s—body was as sexless as a mannequin, no breasts, no external genitals. As I watched, wings appeared between his shoulder blades and opened out like a fan. The wings were white with a silver sheen and spread so wide they threw everything into shadow.
I could see each individual feather, and they looked sharp. Dai fluttered his wings and they made the wound of a windchime.
“Do you see?” Dai asked, and his voice had altered along with his body. Now when they spoke I could hear the sound of the roaring ocean in their voice, I could hear trumpets on a battlefield. I could hear…eternity.
I could feel tears sliding down my face, burning tracks in my skin.
“Do you see?” Dai repeated.
“Yes,” I whispered. “I see.”
My heart was breaking with a pain greater than I’d felt when I’d been killed in the wreck. I love you I love you I love you, I thought and realized that I was a child, crying for a lost puppy. The sense of wrenching loss was absolute.
“I will always be with you,” Dai said.
“Like my guardian angel?”
“Exactly like,” Dai said.
“All right,” I said. “Then I won’t say goodbye.”
Dai smiled and put their hand on my shoulder. It was a very big hand—as big as my head.
I felt a jolt of absolute elation go through me; a moment of joy so profound it brought fresh tears to my eyes. And then it was gone. And so was Dai.
Where Dai had been standing was a single silver-white feather. A final parting gift.
I picked it up.
Bone Priestess
By: AJ Gala
Dear friends,
What do you make of Death?
Chapter 1
On that morning, Tillie Boyce woke her six-year-old son. Her cheeks were wet and her brown eyes puffy. Every year, without fail, the day was scorching hot without a cloud in sight. They both cleaned up with the fancy lavender soapweed, scrubbing the summer dust off their freckled, brown skin. Afterward, they dressed in their finest. Tillie chose her favorite yellow dress and brocade bodice, and little Rowan joined her in a dark blue doublet. At last, they left their small wooden cottage on the outskirts of Beralin.
Tillie was sure to grab the lunches on her way out—last year she had forgotten them and they had been stuck with a pack of rations from the corner store in the next town. Little Rowan held his own lunch this year, his small hands clutching tight onto the cloth bag. Tillie held the other two bags and together they walked to Victory River.
There were more people at the docks this year. It was busier and busier as the years went by, but no matter the crowds, Victory River was still just as big, blue, and beautiful as it always had been, running through the Siopenne Mainland like a vein of liquid sapphire. Riverboats, sailboats, canoes; they floated up and down during all hours of the day. The city of Beralin was the hub of river commerce in Central Siopenne.
“Rowan, look!” Tillie pointed out a hawk gliding across the tall line of conifers on the other side of the river. “That was a big one, wasn’t it?”
They stood in line to board the Queen Otter, a riverboat going south to the town of Riddenholm. The journey would have taken two days by wagon, and while Tillie knew they could accomplish it easily enough, the ride down the river was magical. They would be having a candle-lit picnic in the warm summer evening by sunset.
The Queen Otter’s captain was a broad dwarven man with a full brown beard save for one jagged triangle on his cheek where there was scar tissue. Tillie knew him well—she’d been riding the Queen Otter since she was little. She boarded, grasping Rowan’s hand as the wooden ramp creaked with their weight. She bumped past the myriad of other passengers until they had a spot to stand together on the deck. They watched the forests of Beralin disappear into the golden, grassy plains just south.
The deck was full of chatter from all around. Accents she’d never heard before. Bits and pieces of tales from outside Siopenne. Tillie never imagined she’d be able to get off the mainland, but squashed out the inner complaint. Siopenne was the largest continent on all of Rosamar—there was no place better in all the world to be confined.
“Where’s this thing’s first stop?”
She looked around for the voice but couldn’t pin it on anyone in particular. “Riddenholm,” she called out.
Rowan squeezed her hand. “I remember when we used to live there, Ma.”
“You do?” She gazed down at his big, dark brown eyes. “You were so little then.”
“We lived next to a book place. You went there every day.”
“That’s right. That’s where I used to work. I rewrote old books and made them pretty again! I’m impressed you remember.” She mussed his hair but didn’t talk about the past anymore.
Along the riverbanks, Tillie and Rowan saw glimpses of a competition. People sparred with short swords or fired at targets with regulation short bows. She even thought she could see axe-throwing.
She focused on it with everything she had. Don’t think about the past, she told herself. Not now. Not yet.
When dusk was an hour away, the Queen Otter pulled in at the port of Riddenholm. Half the passengers disembarked and just as many boarded in their place. Travel was constant. Tillie took Rowan’s hand again and they hiked into town.
Several landmark oaks stood tall and proud but most of Riddenholm was covered in honey-colored plainsgrass swaying gently in the breeze. Tillie breathed in the sweet scent deep. She missed her old home. The Mages Academy had their newest students ambling up and down the streets to light the lanterns. Tonight, the magical fire glittered like diamonds in the glass cages.
“Come on baby, we’re just about there.”
After a long walk Tillie brought them beneath the arches of the Silver Lady Cemetery. A turn to the left, twenty steps down, and two gravestones to the right. The one with the weathered stone rabbit sleeping peacefully atop a granite marker.
Galen Boyce
Eternally Beloved
1106-1133
Rowan already knew what to do and helped his mother unroll the blanket in her bag. They laid it out and peppered the area with little candles before sitting down. Tillie handed him the third bundle of lunch.
“Here. It’s almost sunset. You should give your father the meal this year.”
He sniffled and untied the cloth bag. Inside was fresh rosemary bread they’d baked the day before, smoked fish
from the river, and a bright orange peach.
“The peach will be his favorite,” Rowan said. “He always ate peaches when it got really hot outside.”
Tillie couldn’t help but tear up as she smiled. “He sure did. Here, I’ll cut it up for him. Why don’t you tell him about how we caught the fish? He’ll love that.”
Rowan nestled up to the stone rabbit and made himself comfortable, and in no time at all the words were pouring out of him. Tillie loved that he’d become an expert storyteller. At six years old he could take a simple fishing trip and weave it into a tale that would leave any adult on the edge of their seat. She passed him peach slices and he artfully arranged them by the granite marker.
It was darling to see her son spending time with what they had left of his father, but Tillie’s attention wavered. There was commotion and light from farther in the cemetery. A celebration. She rose and patted Rowan on the shoulder.
“You eat that fish with your daddy. I’m going to see what’s going on at the warden’s station. I’ll be right back, okay baby?”
Her late husband’s grave was the only safe place in the world as far as she was concerned. Whether there was a guardian spirit there for him or not, she knew he would be alright. She set off toward the noise, leaving her food and bag behind. Before long she saw a crowd of richly dressed people, city officials most likely, raising goblets.
“May you live out the rest of your days in peace, my friend!” A man with long salt and pepper hair and reddish skin shook his hand in the air before clapping it on an elderly man’s shoulder. Lord Osprey Tutson—the governor of Riddenholm, and Brin Colt—the grave warden.
Well, the old grave warden, so it seemed.
“Thank you, thank you!” Brin’s vocal cords struggled to make noise. “It was an honor to have served this fine town for so many years, my lord.” Tillie was sure he would crumble under Lord Tutson’s grasp, but he stayed strong. There were others surrounding him, including another man about Lord Tutson’s age with short, wispy, graying hair and a wicked grin. Tillie knew him only as Master Tano, the patriarch of one of Riddenholm’s oldest families.
Queens of Wings & Storms Page 67